Fiscal Rangers

Right Side of Lake Newsletter Wish List for 2009

I haven't put together my FiscalRangers.com wish list yet, but here is one from the local developer run ezine at www.Lakecontygov.info (which is a private website, not a government group). It includes some great ideas, but no real details to support some of the "charges". But, in this economy the level of emotional aggravation indicated by the list is probably what a lot of people feel, but local politicians may be caving to staff recommendations and relationships, rather than listen to the public. vj December 31, 2008 2009 Lake County Wish List www.lakecountygov.info Tonight, the ball will drop on 2008. For many working families in Lake County that Waterford crystal ball can’t drop fast enough, and just maybe it will hit hard enough to shatter all of the bad memories. As everyone in Lake County looks toward 2009, there seems to be a renewed hope for a better day and happier times for the thousands of working families in the area. Citizens for Better Government, L.L.C. has come up with its 2009 Wish List, and with your help, just maybe some of these wishes can turn into realities. So, with that, our wishes for 2009 are: Every government official in... Read more →

Christian Groups May Start Campaign to Pull Students out of Public Schools

It seems that many Christian groups are getting fed up with public school systems for various reasons, and some of them are hatching a plan to get many Christian families to pull their kids from public school systems. I can remember the political correctness in California schools, and the efforts of Muslims and other groups to rewrite school books to proselytize their own beliefs (about gays, etc.) and acceptance of behaviors not condoned by Christian groups. Whatever you think about the reasons for doing this, if it takes off, it will be interesting to see what happens to the size and budgets of school districts everywhere. So, maybe the practitioners of political correctness and liberal viewpoints might find their "in the face" efforts in some areas of the country could become very costly. Frequent listeners to conservative talk shows often hear college kids call in to describe liberal professors and their indoctrination attempts in class. How many conservative families had their k-12 kids pushed to learn only about Obama and democratic viewpoints? I don't know. Read the article here and view the video - I don't know how big this movement is, but since we focus on fiscal issues, pulling... Read more →

Outgoing Anna Cowin 2008 Wrap Up Report & Excuse of the Week

Well, Anna Cowin is no longer the Superintendent of the Lake County School District. So, the Daily Commercial reporter, David Donald, who attended many of the School District meetings wrote a 2008 year end recap of issues and friction involving her and the School Board. So, I include it here for posterity, since articles in 2006 about her disputes with the Board got me to start attending the meetings and writing this blog. One thing is for sure, now the new Board cannot blame mismanagement on Cowin any longer, since the prior Board switched (after voters approved it) to an appointed Superintendent. So, now voters should start asking the Board and staff to explain why there aren't any meetings or reports that clearly show how efficient, effective and economical the District is in operations. For instance, are they using standard cost accounting to measure and track labor or capital efficiencies. And, do they compare their actual tracking cost ratios to other similar Districts both IN and OUT of Florida. And finally, is there a constant downtrend in costs per unit like a business would show? PS: The last sentence in the article below describes an exuse from Anna Cowing that... Read more →

Dept of Justice Convicts Georgia man of $2000,000 Bribery of Atlanta School District Official

In case you think that bribery of local government officials is just a local matter, think again. Here, the US Dept. of Justice Attorney prosecuted and convicted an Atlanta man of paying $2000,000 in bribes to an Atlanta IT Director to get awarded some contracts. Favorite quote: "Today's sentencing demonstrates the Department's resolve to hold accountable individuals who disrupt the competitive process and frustrate efforts to help our nation's economically disadvantaged school children," said Deborah A. Garza , Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department's Antitrust Division. R. Clay Harris was sentenced to five years in federal prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, and with two co-defendants was ordered to pay restitution of $234,324.50. vj SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice Local Businessman Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for Fraud & Bribery Involving Federal 'E-Rate' Funds ATLANTA, Dec. 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- R. Clay Harris, 56, of Peachtree City, Ga., was sentenced today by United States District Judge Clarence Cooper on charges of bribery and conspiring to bribe a former Atlanta Public Schools (APS) official and to deprive APS and the citizens of Atlanta of that official's honest services. "This defendant paid over two hundred... Read more →

Lake County Nursing Homes Ranked by new Federal Medicare Quality Tracking Database

Note: We will follow up on this later this week as we interview Lake County health officials about this new quality rating system. I don't know whether local officials have any control over local nursing homes, but will find out. vj First, we had Federal quality rankings of school districts, then Federal ratings for health and drug plans, and now the Federal agency responsible for Medicare has just created a new online database to compare their quality rankings of Nursing homes in the US. Lake County had NO nursing homes ranked the highest overall level of 5, but did have one in the lowest ranking of 1, and another home in the lower ranking of 2. You can search by state, distance from zip code, etc. Medicare now ranks nursing homes by several ranking categories with scores from 1 to the best of 5. Whoever said that government workers can avoid performance measurement? - it is coming, and those local government agencies that do not understand how to define and monitor quality and measurable performance indicators will soon find out when they appear on a ranked list of performance indicators. US News & World Reports just published an article HERE... Read more →

Lake County Staff get Merit Increases while County Economy drifts

This is from Don Magruder's website - I don't agree with everything they say, but this detailed article about how County Government management tried to hide issuance of bonuses or merit increases in this poor economy indicate a major disconnect on the part of the Commissioners and the staff. In contrast, in today's Sentinel, it said the County of Orange is considering reducing ALL staff wages by 8% to meet lowered budget revenues. It seems the Commissioners in Lake County are out of touch and rubber stamping whatever County Manager Cindy Hall asks for. vj Read the full article HERE. Read more →

Newt Gingrich Starts Initiative to Improve Government Honesty, Effectiveness, Productivity & Creativity

Newt published this article on a blog, and what got my interest is the list of local government agencies where employees are dealing themselves sweet deals or failing to measure and improve efficiency and effectiveness. One issue he mentions is California Highway Patrol officers that declare themselves disabled just before retirement to boost their pension benefits. Or, the Chicago area school district where over 70% of the students do NOT graduate on time and Newt questions why the management should get a salary. News says that Republicans should focus on improving government in the following four areas: According to Newt, the four most important words in rethinking government in the years to come will be these: Honesty Effectiveness Productivity Creativity It is my opinion that both the local Lake County School District and the Local Lake County Commission are using arcane, outmoded budget systems that don't measure effectiveness or productivity like every accounting major is taught to do in cost accounting and finance classes, so we could start there. Read the entire article below. Favorite quote (speaking about corrupt Illinois Governor Blago...witch: More recently, the principle that big government breeds big corruption was perhaps expressed best by humorist P.J. O’Rourke,... Read more →

School District Residency Fraud Can Soak up Local Tax Dollars

Each student registering in a school should be a resident from the local School District taxing region. If they lie about where they live to attend the school, the school's local area taxpayers are paying for the student while the student's real residential school district collects their percent of "local taxes" but does not incur the teaching, busing and other related expenses. Does that happen in the Lake County School District? We don't know, but here is a good article on the issue from the Detroit Free Press, and the one example below shows that about 200 of a 3000 student body, or about 7%, are fraudulent residents that are actually caught and sent back to their own school districts. Favorite quote: Southfield (School District in Michigan), which has two staffers handling residency investigations, removes up to 200 students every year after checking the status of the 3,000-some students living in apartments and any others suspected of attending school fraudulently, officials said. vj from the Detroit Free Press Ethics, taxes, education at issue as schools weed out residency fraud BY GINA DAMRON FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER In a morning routine familiar to most teens, the 17-year-old from Westland wakes up... Read more →

Chicago & Illinois Corruption Probe Yields Transparency Suggestion for Local Governments

There are many articles coming out about the Illinois Governor and his attempts to "sell" Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. Although we haven't really had much reported corruption in Lake County, I found a quote in one article (below) about the Illinois and Chicago corruption reputation problem. I actually found a quote in the article when it was sent out by a Supervisor of Orange County, California, John Moorlach, who detected a possible financial crisis due to the County Treasurer's investment practices. He was ignored back in the 90's, and then his prediction came true and Orange County lost over a BILLION dollars that led to the County filing bankruptcy. Moorlach was subsequently elected County Auditor-Controller (Florida does not have a central county Auditor or Controller like California), then later he was elected a County Supervisor (like a FL County Commissioner). He constantly gets calls from reporters when some other government agency anywhere in the US declared bankruptcy or suffers fraud or corruption. The article below includes an interview of him looking for suggestions related to the Chicago corruption. Here is a quote from the reporter (not Moorlach) that applies to any government agency...it focuses on transparency of government spending... Read more →

Example of Government Mis-Management at Federal Level

Here is an example of government mis-management at the Federal level that could serve as a model of what can also happen in local governments. Apparently the Veteran's Administration schedules appointments for medical or other services for Vets, but they don't ensure that about 18% of the slots are used, thus staff is paid to sit without anything to do. Apparently they have wait lists for the appointments but are NOT efficient in making sure the people on the wait lists are notified to use up the unused appointment slots. So, what if a School District had 500 buses but only scheduled 450 for trips? Or, they had 12,000 seats available for rides each day, but only picked up 10,000 per day? That means a big chunk of "capacity" wasn't being used, but is still incurring expenditures for wages and supplies. This is where the electing of business savvy officials is important. They would request such reports and propose mid-year changes, but officials who don't have the "business" gene would rubber stamp the staff recommendations and not ask. An example is the Lake County School Board gets monthly budget to actual reports in their Board meeting package, but NEVER DISCUSS... Read more →

Orlando Sentinel Publishes Article of Pending School Board Fiscal Issues BEFORE the decision is made

Today, Orlando Sentinel reporter Denise-Marie Balona wrote an article in the Lake section on the School Board where she described several issues coming up for a Board vote tonight at the 6pm Board meeting in the County Administration Building. This is rare to have a reporter describe several Board package decision issues BEFORE the Board decision, rather than afterwards. I suggest you visit the link to see the article, then read my email to Denise which I sent also to the Board and other members. Because it is quite hard for the public to get access to the Board decision "package", I added some comments about needed transparency. If Balona had not written the article, the Board could have voted to sell a School building for 1/8th of what the appraisal price is. I have no idea why the staff thought it appropriate to put the prospective buyer on the agenda without first discussing a general proposal for competitive bidding at a lower price. In the Cowin days, this item could have been buried on the consent agenda and may have escaped Board analysis. Now, it is possible some work was done to justify the proposal by the staff, but... Read more →

Stupid Government Tricks - Orlando Shoots Self in Foot over Parking Fees

Update: After we wrote the entry below, we found that in the same Dec 6 paper, the Orlando Sentinel had an editorial section that provided more information. It seems that indeed, Orlando politicians were the ones that delayed increasing very low parking rates, so they are the ones that should be slapped around for ignoring good business practices and economics. Right now, the op-ed isn't on the website yet, but here is where it should appear later for the Dec. 6th edition. This supports our opinion that NO candidate should be allowed to run for political office without passing courses in business management and economics. The political parties that continue to support and allow such amateurs in economics to control business decisions of billion dollar government agencies funded by taxpayers should also be chastised. Our Opinion: It seems the City of Orlando staff is whining that the Parking division is running short of funds and needs to drastically increase parking fees charged to the public for parking in downtown Orlando. So, we have some comments on that issue, plus a discussion about the Lake County parking structure fiscal fiasco. But, according to the Orlando Sentinel article below, the City caused... Read more →